Friday, December 31, 2004

The Appearance of Impropriety, part 1

In the wake of back-to-back ethics slaps at the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, House Republicans are preparing to make it more difficult to initiate ethics investigations and could remove the Republican chairman who presided over the admonishments of Mr. DeLay last fall.

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In the wake of back-to-back ethics slaps at the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, House Republicans are preparing to make it more difficult to initiate ethics investigations and could remove the Republican chairman who presided over the admonishments of Mr. DeLay last fall.

A House leadership aide said a package of rules changes to be presented to the House when Congress convenes on Tuesday could include a plan that would require a majority vote of the ethics panel to pursue a formal investigation. Now, a deadlock on the panel, which is evenly split between parties, keeps a case pending. The possible change, the aide said, would mean that a tie vote would effectively dismiss the case.

The aide said the change would instill more bipartisanship in ethics cases. But Democrats and outside groups said the proposal would dilute an already weak ethics process.

It remained uncertain whether Representative Joel Hefley of Colorado, the current chairman of the panel, would stay in that post. A spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who would play a chief role in determining the appointment, said no decision had been made.

Many Republicans expressed dissatisfaction with Mr. Hefley after the committee reports critical of Mr. DeLay were issued, saying he had allowed Democrats to score political points against Mr. DeLay for conduct that did not merit such scrutiny.

But the potential for change in the chairmanship has drawn fire from Democrats. "It is our responsibility to uphold a high ethical standard," Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said in a statement Wednesday. "Removing a chair of the ethics committee for upholding that standard would be a stain on the House of Representatives."

Democrats are planning to try next week to force a floor vote on a proposal requiring any member of either party's leadership to step aside if indicted on a criminal charge. The move would reverse last month's vote by Republicans, in a closed-door party meeting, to eliminate such a requirement for Republicans to protect Mr. DeLay should he be indicted in a campaign finance inquiry under way in Texas.

In Texas, state Republican legislative leaders and party officials are considering some maneuvers of their own in light of the investigation. One proposal would take authority for prosecuting the campaign finance case away from the Democratic district attorney in Austin and give it to the state attorney general, a Republican. Another possible move would legalize corporate campaign contributions like those that figure into the state case.

The October rulings by the House ethics panel regarding Mr. DeLay came after years of inaction by the panel, a stance attributed to an unofficial truce between the two parties over the filing of complaints after several bitter and partisan ethics fights in the 1990's.

In the first, Mr. DeLay was admonished for going too far in trying to persuade a lawmaker to support a Medicare prescription drug law. In the second, he was criticized for giving the appearance of granting undue access at a fund-raising event and for involving a federal agency in a political matter in Texas.

But the panel also later chastised Representative Chris Bell, the Texas Democrat who initiated a complaint against Mr. DeLay after losing his own seat, for exaggerating the accusations. Republicans said the tone of the complaint showed that lawmakers needed to be more accountable for ethics filings, and some called for new controls on complaints and a ban on outside groups working with lawmakers to prepare them.

Representative David Dreier, Republican of California and chairman of the Rules Committee, has indicated he will consider changes in the ethics process but his office could provide no details Wednesday night.

Members of outside groups that monitor the ethics process said they were not certain what would be proposed but they expected Republicans to try to deter new cases, particularly in light of the possibility of more growing out of an inquiry into lobbying on Indian gambling issues.

"They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and it is all seemingly to protect one man," said Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch and part of a coalition pressing for stronger ethics rules.

Mr. Fitton and others said an effort to oust Mr. Hefley would smack of retaliation.

"The removal of Representative Hefley would constitute a declaration of war against ethics in the House," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that a possible replacement for Mr. Hefley would be Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and a former member of the panel. Mr. Smith this year contributed $5,000 from his campaign account to Mr. DeLay's legal defense. Aides said Mr. Smith had not been approached about the post.

In Texas, no bills have been introduced regarding the jurisdictional issues or campaign contributions. But Andrew Taylor, a prominent Republican lawyer in Austin, recently told The Austin American-Statesman that he expected to be lobbying to legalize corporate donations when the Legislature returns in January.

And Texas Republicans have made it clear that they want to transfer the authority for prosecuting the case away from Ronnie Earle, the Travis County district attorney, and give it to Greg Abbott, the state attorney general.

Earlier this year, the executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas endorsed transferring state money for the public integrity unit from the Travis County district attorney to the state attorney general.

The unit was moved to the county office by the State Legislature, not the State Constitution, so the Legislature can return it, said Sherry Sylvester, a spokeswoman for the Texas Republican Party. Ms. Sylvester said that allowing the local district attorney's office to prosecute state cases because it covered the state capital is analogous to giving a District of Columbia district attorney the power to prosecute members of Congress.